Island of Lemurs: Madagascar takes audiences on a spectacular journey to the remote and wondrous world of Madagascar, where lemurs arrived millions of years ago as castaways. They’ve since evolved into hundreds of diverse species, but are now highly...

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Narrated by Academy Award® winner Jeff Bridges, Dream Big: Engineering Our World will transform how you think about engineering. From the Great Wall of China and the world’s tallest buildings to underwater robots and solar cars, Dream Big...

Experience being aboard a modern carrier at sea in the new giant-screen film Aircraft Carrier: Guardian of the Seas, premiering at the Fleet Science Center on Friday, November 10, 2017. This film is screening in California only at the Fleet Science...

Does toast always land butter-side down? What keeps you drier: running in the rain or walking through it? Can you really pull a tablecloth off of a fully set table without disturbing a dish? In this amazing hands-on exhibition, you can put these myths to...

Game Masters: The Exhibition showcases the world’s best video game designers, from the arcade era to today’s console and online games. And with 100+ playable games, it’s game on! (No quarters needed.)
The work of more than 30 designers who have made a...

Dream! Design! Build! Explore the Fleet's collection of engineering activities in Dream! Design! Build! This exhibition features the classic favorite Block Busters, the versatile Fit-a-Brick Build Zone and the newest addition to the engineering...

Explore the Fleet's classic collection of hands-on science exhibits, guaranteed to engage your mind and appeal to your senses. Located in the Fleet's Main Gallery, these interactive science exhibits may surprise you with new discoveries about the world...

Some people think video games are only good for mindless entertainment, but technology developed in the gaming industry is being used for everything from brain research to drug development to innovative therapies for stroke patients. On select Thursdays...

Young Scientists is a hands-on preschool science program offered by the Fleet Science Center. This program provides informal learning experiences that support and enhance exploration, create excitement and facilitate scientific discoveries.
The program...

Fleet Night of Science will be back in March 2018 with a big party to celebrate the San Diego Festival of Science and Engineering.
Until then, check out this special event:
Exclusive Private Screening of Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Find all the event...

The third Saturday of every month, early access to galleries 9-10 a.m. IMAX showing at 10 a.m.
The Fleet invites the Autism Spectrum Community to enjoy our museum through this special opportunity. Adults and families with children with autism can enjoy...

Stop by on Saturdays to play, innovate and solve problems with other curious minds in the Tinkerers’ Club, led by our in-house inventors. Take your invention home and share your creation and stories with friends. Supplies are limited. Advance...

Register now for Winter Camp 2017!
Looking for something exciting, fun and educational this winter break? The Fleet Science Center is offering two weeks of full-day science fun this winter! Grades 1–3 can enjoy a variety of fun, educational, hands-on...

In conjunction with the Center for Ethics in Science and Technology, the Fleet Science Center welcomes guests to encounter science from an ethical viewpoint. Held on the first Wednesday of the month, from October through June, this ongoing series brings...

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Join us on the first Wednesday of each month at 7 p.m. or 8:15 p.m. for a tour of the solar system narrated by the Fleet’s astronomer. Journey through the cosmos with us as we explore a new topic each month.
For optimal viewing, each show is...

Explor-O-Rama ~ Get Your Hands On Science!

June 12, 2012

San Diego, CA; June 12, 2012 — The Reuben H. Fleet Science Center will open “EXPLOR-O-RAMA ~ Get Your Hands On Science!” on Saturday, June 16. Our newest Main Gallery exhibition combines some of our all-time favorites with never-seen-before interactive exhibits from San Francisco’s Exploratorium. This collection features opportunities to explore mechanics, motion, math, hearing, electricity and many other interconnected areas of science – sometimes all at the same time! Look for new challenges with the Bicycle Wheel Gyro, Strobe Flower and Magnetic Wave Machine; and enjoy the return of popular favorites the Whisper Dishes, Tornado and Pedal Generator!

Exhibit Descriptions: Find where the Balancing Ball will float to on a stream of air blowing out of a tube, generated by a large fan beneath it. Ride the Bicycle Wheel Gyro and see how any object that spins will hold to its axis, until a force is applied from outside. Using the magnet, lift and drop the Bouncing Ball on a steel plate to demonstrate audibly the exponential decay of the motion and the corresponding increase of the frequency of the bounces.

The ever-popular Tornado’s air currents present a delightful, chaotic and unpredictable image created of mist and fans, delighting viewers as it wanders away from its source and escapes the grasp of its shearing winds. Modulate the air flowing past Fluttering Bridge to create different wave patterns and see how resonance builds on each wave, increasing the fluttering amplitude - a fantastic teaching tool for resonance and elastic vs. dampened structures, especially bridge design. Children and adults alike spend hours orbiting steel balls into the hyperbolic funnel of the Gravity Well, a visualization of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

At Hold the Phone, hear thought-provoking facts, trivia and great moments in the history of science; all pointing to a new way to understand the world around us. Not really magic at all, the Magic Wand provides a surface on which an image is reflected, showing the eye’s capacity to retain individual reflections as one whole picture. The Magnetic Wave Machine combines 25 ceramic magnets which dynamically interact and react to visitors driving one or more pendulums by hand. Shaking the large globe of the Marble Accelerator causes a large ball bearing to race around the inside of the globe, much like an inside out hula-hoop.

The Motion Theater features a selection of classic non-narrative films exploring the science, beauty, and wonder inherent in the topic of motion. Ten brass weights hung at different lengths appear to move together, first in a line, then as a Pendulum Snake, then in seemingly random motion. The Rope Squirter lets you manipulate a loop of string thrown by a pulley attached to a spinning motor, causing it to move in interesting and unexpected ways.

As visitors stare at a dot and spin the disc of the Spinning Eraser, colored shapes and three dimensional objects disappear from view in movement induced blindness. Square Wheels roll smoothly across a very bumpy surface - why don’t they move up and down as it rolls along?

Strobe Flower creates delicate, intricate shapes reminiscent of ghostly flowers and insects as you twirl a small scrap of plastic grocery bag in front of a blank computer screen, adjusting the image into and out of phase with the computer screen’s frequency. Children of all ages love the challenge of getting small metal disks and rings to stand on edge while moving around the Turntable, without letting them slide off.

Two DC permanent magnet motors wired together alternate as a DC Motor-Generator, as well as demonstrating how a generator’s energy goes toward lighting a lamp. The Generator Effect, created with an array of large magnets, a flat winding of copper wire, and a track & roller assembly; also demonstrates how a strong magnetic field can light a small lamp. Pedal Generator dramatically demonstrates the amount of energy – and physical exertion - it takes to create electricity, as you sit in a chair pushing pedals connected to an electric generator through a crankshaft, trying keep three headlight- style lamps lit at the same brilliance.

In Whisper Dishes, two large parabolic dishes focus sound and light waves and allow you to talk across the room without raising your voices. As you speak into the microphone of Pitch Switch, you make the air around the microphone vibrate, and control an electronic circuit which picks up the vibrations and changes the frequency, allowing you to raise and lower the pitch of your voice by more than an octave. You may hear illusory sounds that are not there as Repeating Words demonstrates a sound illusion, that of repeating sounds which quickly lose their context. Slice up a recording of your voice with Speech Dissector and listen to the pieces, see the visual patterns (amplitude) and alter it by reversing the playback and changing the playback speed.

When you Duck Into a Kaleidoscope, three conjoined mirrors create multiple reflections and impression of a crowd - is this what it’s like to look into infinity? An object placed on the lower mirror of the Parabolas creates a convincing image of it floating at the top. Reaching for this image reveals its ghost-like nature as the visitor’s hand passes right through it.

Primary of A Cube, with two 90 degree mirrored right angles cut into each of its sides, is a fun way to play with mirrors. The Lens Table, with a light source, multiple objects, and screens moved around in tracks, lets you create different images using convex lenses and different sized pinholes.

Have you forgotten how the world looks to a small child? Enjoy the fresh perspective provided from the seat of this Giant Chair. The pen and drawing board of the Drawing Table are connected to pendulums swinging at right angles, as you change the pendulum phase and deflection to draw different shapes.

About the Fleet Science Center

The Fleet Science Center connects people of all ages to the possibilities and power of science to create a better future. At the science center, you can explore and investigate more than 100 interactive exhibits that pique your curiosity and become immersed in an IMAX film adventure that shows the wonders of the planet—and beyond—in the Eugene Heikoff and Marilyn Jacobs Heikoff Giant Dome Theater. For young science enthusiasts, the Fleet hosts school field trips, science workshops and educational camps. For adults, we offer events like Fleet Night of Science and community events, such as Two Scientists Walk Into a Bar. In the community, we provide free neighborhood science events weekly through 52 Weeks of Science. Teachers are encouraged to join our Teacher Partner Program and take advantage of our professional development opportunities. Additionally, at the Fleet Science Center, visitors will find unique educational toys and games, books, IMAX DVDs and more in the North Star Science Store, and pizzas, sandwiches, salads and healthy treats in Craveology. Located at 1875 El Prado, two blocks south of the San Diego Zoo on Park Blvd., the Fleet is San Diego’s science center. Science starts here and opens a world of possibility. For information regarding current admission prices, please call (619) 238-1233 or visit our website at fleetscience.org.